Shooting Dice: More on Flow Theory and RPGs

Now that I have my Google Firefox Blogger Comments extension, I've become privy to all those wonderful bloggers out there who are writing about mine in here. Today, I found this, from Malcom Sheppard, a designer of table top fantasy role-playing games: Shooting Dice: More on Flow Theory and RPGs. All I can say is that it made me very, very happy. Wait, maybe I can say more.

I've never really tried to apply the concepts cited in the article (ME/WE, Coliberation) to tabletop role-playing games. I developed them in the late 70s to describe the interplay between individual and group, especially as it takes place when people are playing exceptionally well together (as in the coincidentally relevant The Well-Played Game). Maybe that explains why my jaw had dropped onto my keyboard.

It's like what happened as I watched my children grow up and take on completely unexpected professions and lifestyles. Deeply, deliciously schadenfreudian.

"MEwards," writes Sheppard, "can confirm the individual's vision for his or her characters, and WEwards are tools that can reward cooperation on a common narrative of events in play...coliberation is the act of creating something new by combining these influences.."

And "If challenge/ability does not match to social cohesiveness of the group, then the group will define itself outside of the preset channels of the game."

Wonderful insights. They weren't mine when I first thought of ME/WE and coliberation. But they are now.

Thank you, Mr. Sheppard. Thank you entirely.